


The Lady and the Tiger

by Corycides



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 08:38:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1104742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corycides/pseuds/Corycides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The classic dilemma is which door to pick, whether to choose the Lady or the Tiger. But what if the Lady has her own choice to make? Working together to rescue Miles after he runs into another 'old friend', Charlie and Bass both struggle with temptation. Him, to resist it; her, to be it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lady and the Tiger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AvaRosier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaRosier/gifts).



Edgar Torres was about to have a very bad night. In some ways he deserved it. He was a corrupt judge, he cheated on his wife, he’d killed his neighbour after the Blackout for a generator. He wasn’t a good person. None of that had anything to do with whyhe was about to have a very bad night though. That was down to him being the only guest invited to the Governor’s wedding who was about the same size as Sebastian Monroe.

Stripped to his boxers and socks Edgar stood at the side of the road, face mottled burgundy with rage. ‘I will have your balls cut off, braised in wine and fed to the crows!’ he promised. ‘I’ll have your women’s hair shorn and sold to wigmakers!’

Charlie shoved a gag in his mouth, tying the wad of fabric in place with a strip torn from his companion’s petticoat. ‘That is just odd,’ she told him. ‘Now sit down, and don’t make us regret leaving you alive.’

He glared at her; she had a sword. Edgar sat down on a rock, lizards scuttling out of the shadow of his ass.

Shaking her head Charlie went back to the carriage. The plan had been for Rachel to play Denise Torres. There was one problem with that. Unless Denise had dropped 20 years, and more importantly about five inches in height, Edgar hadn’t been taking his wife to the ball. The girl huddled in her shift and Aaron’s jacket, tear stains smearing her make-up. Rachel was squirming into the party dress. It wasn’t going...well.

‘I guess, it could pass?’ Charlie said.

‘For what?’ Monroe asked acerbically, Edgar’s evening finery hung over his arm. ‘A six-foot Barbie doll in Skipper’s wardrobe?’

Both women stared at him. Charlie had no idea what he was talking about; Rachel looked amused.

‘Sisters, Rachel,’ he said. ‘Remember. Give the dress to Charlie. It’ll be easier to stuff her bra than let down the hem.’

Asshole. It kind of...stung. Not that she’d ever liked Monroe, but they’d worked together well on the road to Willoughby. It been a sort of...mutual respect. Since Charlie and Aaron’s hunt for the nanites had brought them down here, he’d acted like she was in the way. The only thing Charlie didn’t know was if she was in the way of him getting into her mom or her Uncle Miles’ pants.

Either way, he was pushing his luck.

‘How about you wind it in. Monroe,’ she snapped. ‘At least until we get Miles back, then you can crawl back into your bottle.’

‘Aw, honey, if only you could ride that high horse right over the Governor’s walls, we’d not to worry about the fact your mom hasn’t shaved her legs in a year.’

‘I don’t remember you letting me have a razor when I was your ‘guest’ either, Bass,’ Rachel said coldly. ‘So you can’t have cared that much. He’s right though, Charlie. This dress isn’t going to work, but maybe we should make another plan? I don’t know if you can pull this off.’

Charlie raised her eyebrows. ‘What? Sneaking into a guarded compound, flirting my way into the leader’s inner office and threatening him until he coughs up Miles’ location? Like I’ve not done that before. This time I don’t even need to get hit in the face.’

Of course, last time she’d not had to go through with killing her target. This time Miles wouldn’t be there to step in. She wasn’t going to bring that up now, though.

Rachel hesitated and then skinned out of the dress, all spare angles and long, lean legs. Sometimes Charlie wondered where she’d got the short gene from. Everyone else in the family was tall; she wandered around at armpit height.

‘Here,’ Rachel passed the dress over. ‘I’ll go tell Aaron about the change in plan, get these two out of the way. Charlie, are you sure...’

‘We need to save Miles,’ Charlie said. ‘He’d do it for us. Maybe not in a dress, though.’

Rachel gave her a quick, bone-creaking hug and scrambled back into her clothes. She marched Torres and his girl back down the road. Thankfully there was no need to kill them, just to keep them out of the way until morning.

Left with Monroe, Charlie hesitated. He had no such qualms, stripping down to bare, sweaty skin with unabashed efficiency. He didn’t wear underwear. The hard muscles stretching over tanned shoulders she’d last seen in New Vegas, but the long, heavy muscles of his thighs and the tight curve of his ass were new...to her anyhow.

‘If you’ve got your eyeful,’ he said, pulling on Edgar’s trousers. ‘You might want to change.’

Charlie shrugged. ‘I paid an ounce of diamonds for that ass in New Vegas,’ she said. ‘Since I’m not allowed to kill you anymore, I figured I’d see what I paid for.’

It was the first time since Willoughby he’d laughed at anything she said. Charlie wondered if this was what her uncle felt whenever he couldn’t quite bring himself to cut Monroe loose. He smiled at you like you were the sun.

And it meant nothing. It was just the shape of his face. Charlie hid behind her hair and undressed quickly...and clumsily, nearly tripping over her own jeans as they tangled around her foot. She hopped in place, bent over and swearing as she wrenched them off.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Monroe growled, sounding pissed off and impatient.

Charlie straightened up, pushing a tangle of hair out of her face with one hand and mouth open to tell him to go screw himself, and then he was kissing her. Big, warm hands - callused in all the right places to make her shiver - wrapped around her waist and shoved her back against the lacquered side of the carriage. His mouth covered hers roughly, stubble scraping and lips bruising, as his tongue shoved against hers.

She shoved him. She slapped him. She told him to never fucking touch her again.

Or she should have. Should have done anything except moan into his mouth and twist her hands in Edgar Torres’ expensive silk shirt to drag him closer.

One thing she’d never told anyone - not even Miles, who knew almost everything except the things he pretended didn’t exist - was that the first time she’d masturbated she’d been thinking of President Monroe. First time - first fifty times. Who else was a teenager with wanderlust and no plans to stay put going to think about? Jamie from the farm, who was always taking about how a wife would be an extra pair of hands? Or Tom, who was all big talk and a supposedly big dick and who’d gotten Mary Patterson in Kendall’s View pregnant the year before? Aaron?

No, back before she’d realised what sort of scum gravitated to the miltia (and after, sometimes after) she’d thought of heavy serge and cold buttons against her hot skin, the familiar face from posters picking her out of a crowd in some city and fucking her on a bed with cool sheets and the sort of comforter that Maggie talked about during the winters like they were better than sex.

Habit made this easy. His hands running up her ribcage to cup her breasts, warm through old cotton, and the knee pushing her thighs apart...as far as her body was concerned they’d all been here before. She touched his chest, laying her finger across the wings of his collarbone, and stretched up onto her tiptoes into the kiss.

He bit her lower lip, the nip of pain making her whimper, and scrape-kissed his way down her throat. Sharp teeth worked at the tender skin just under her jaw, tongue and lips suckling the pain away into a throbbing ache.

Charlie twisted her hand around his neck, cropped for heat curls dense and itchy under palm, and pulled him closed. It was stupid and careless and there were things that she - that they - should be doing, but in the delirium of the moment she didn’t care. Her 14 year old self’s fantasy was coming true - ish - and she just...wanted.

Then he stepped back, hands grabbing her shoulders to keep her body from swaying after him, and twitched an empty smile at her. It was the cruel smile, the one that said ‘Oh, it’s just you’, so Charlie had already braced herself when he finally spoke.

‘There,’ he said, wiping a thumb along the curve of her lower lip. ‘Now you look like the reason we’re late.’

It would have cut, except his breathing was rough and ragged and the hand touching her face was trembling and she’d felt his cock digging into her stomach. His want was so naked, this attempt to be dismissive was almost funny.

Almost, because he was trying to be cruel. He wanted to hurt her, to make her feel the slut while he got to walk away and pretend until he convinced himself.

Charlie had grown up sharing a bedroom with her brother, with her Dad and stepmom hovering constantly. She’d spent months on the road with Miles and Aaron for company, both of them convinced she’d been eaten by a bear if she spent more than five seconds having a pee. Between her and President ‘if I have an itch, someone scratches for me’ Monroe, she thought she had more practice pretending not to be hot and bothered when you were.

She smiled and tugged at a loose button on his shirt, popping it free and flicking it out into the desert. ‘Good idea,’ she said pleasantly, and then looked down into her cleavage. ‘Oh, and as you can see? I don’t need to stuff anything.’

When she looked up, his eyes stayed down. She put her finger under his chin and lifted. ‘Don’t get distracted. This is important.’

She held her composure as she slid between him and the carriage, turning her back to him as she wriggled into the silky dress. She glanced over her shoulder at Monroe and found him still watching her, all flat expression and hooded blue eyes.

‘Can you get the zip?’ she asked, gathering her heavy blonde hair over her shoulder.

He pushed himself off the carriage, shirt still flapping loose, and prowled over to her. A finger trailed along her spine, from the nape of her neck to the small of her back.

‘Do you think this is a game, Charlie?’ he asked, voice raspy and too close to her ear. It made her squirm inside, although she managed - she thought - to keep her visible reaction to a quick breath. ‘And is it one you want to play with me.’

Charlie shrugged a slim shoulder dismissively. ‘I’m not playing any games,’ she said, then glanced over her shoulder at him to smirk. ‘Of course, if I was - I’d be winning.’

‘Really?’ One hand cupped her hip and he pulled the zip up slowly, knuckles nudging against her skin all the way up. She couldn’t help the hard swallow that gulped out of her as he reached the top and leaned in, breath warm against the nape of her neck. ‘Because I always win, Charlie.’

He licked her. She was pretty sure he licked her. It made her stomach knot like a warm, wet fist and then he turned her around and gave her a slow, measuring once over.

‘You’ll do. Get the shoes on and let’s go, before your mother comes to find out what’s keeping us,’ he turned away, buttoning his shirt up and tucking the tails of his shirt in. ‘Move it, Charlie.’

 

The gilt edged invite got them waved past the guards, gates and dogs. Another thing in Edgar’s favour had been the fact he was owed enough favours to get invited, but wasn’t owed enough to make anyone seek him out. Inside the compound was…

It was like New Vegas was the training bra to what this was. Everything glittered and sparkled, crystal on the tables and diamonds on cufflinks and earlobes, musicians played on scattered stages and nobody bothered to take the debauchery out of sight behind tent walls.

Charlie felt every bit the hick that Miles had called her once. She dragged her eyes away from a woman wearing nothing but strategic spangles splashing about in a huge wine glass and stepped closer to Monroe. Stupid, but...it made her feel safer - better the devil you know.

‘How are we going to find anyone in this?’ she whispered, waving a hand at the party.

Monroe tugged at his collar absently, running his finger around his throat like it was throttling him. The sleek black suit made him uncomfortable. Maybe it was too close to a uniform.

‘We circulate,’ he said.

Charlie gave him a dubious look from under her lashes. ‘And how long will a stolen invite and a dress with a dirty hem fool people once we start talking to them?’

He grinned at her and held his hand out, palm up and fingers loose. ‘We aren’t going to talk.’

Charlie studied his hand even more dubiously, but...right now she had to trust him. She sighed and put her hand in his, letting him tug her out onto the dance floor.

Apparently, he could dance. That was lucky, because Charlie couldn’t. She stood on his foot twice and nearly tripped them both up when a bit of fancy footwork led to one of her feet wandering off. Monroe pulled on the charm, apologising to the busty red-head he’d bumped into while letting his eyes linger on cleavage that no-one would ever suggest needed stuffing.

‘When would I have learned to dance?’ she muttered sourly to him as he pulled her away. ‘If you’d asked...’

‘Don’t you country girls go to hoe-downs?’ he asked, voice sour through his tight smile.’All you have to do is follow me.’

‘We were more worried about having enough stores to pay the tithe and still eat that winter,’ she hissed back. ‘Can’t you stop just...doing that with your feet?’

‘Moving?’

He stood on her toe. It hurt a lot more in the flimsy slippers than it did in her boots. She gritted a curse out between clenched teeth. Monroe heaved an exasperated sigh into her ear. ‘Relax.’

‘How?’

‘Think of it like a fight,’ he said, pulling her in close. A hand slid down to cup her ass through fine silk and she could feel the slide and play of muscle and bone under his skin. Everytime she breathed in she tasted him on her tongue.  ‘I move, you counter. I retreat, you pursue.’

‘There’s no music on a battlefield.’

He kissed her ear, tongue tracing the curve. ‘You know there is. Now, don’t think about it, just react.’

‘By slapping you?’

He nuzzled her cheek, beard rough but not unpleasantly so. ‘Are you conceding the game, Charlotte Admitting that I won?’

She rested her cheek against his chest.

‘No,’ she said. Her hands slid around and tucked into the back of his trousers, fingers stroking the smooth skin. Monroe always ran warm. On the way to Willoughby, damp and miserable, she’d waited until he was asleep and crawled up close to suck up his body heat like a lizard. ‘Do you see the Governor?’

‘Not yet.’

He turned and she turned, feet crossing neatly this time. It did help to think of it like a sparring session, she knew how his body moved there. They probably weren’t going to win any dance classes, but it stopped him trampling her toes. Every time she stiffened, he’d kiss her ear or squeeze her backside or pull her so close that she couldn’t catch a breath.

‘There,’ he said suddenly, his body stiffening. ‘Over there, with the guards.’

They turned and Charlie glanced across the room. Governor Jaime Guzman didn’t look the part of an iron-handed dictator, but then Charlie supposed Monroe didn’t either. He was a tall man with an long, open face and fading gilt-brown hair. Good-looking in a farm-boy sort of way.

Technically, Charlie supposed, he was. Opium was a crop, and it one of Guzman’s income streams. He was just a bigger version of Drexel, Charlie told herself. She took a deep breath and glanced at Monroe.

‘So, I just get him on his own.’

‘Then I hurt him until he tells us what we need.’

‘In the middle of a party on a heavily guarded estate, full of people who might or might not be in touch with the Patriots.’

He grinned like she’d invited him to a party. ‘Sounds fun doesn’t it?’

This would be another to add to their list of place names if she was Miles, Charlie realised. Remember Mitla? Except even if she wanted that - which she shouldn’t, probably didn’t - there probably weren’t enough days left. Hell, there were probably weren’t that many hours left.

‘If this goes wrong-’

‘I’ll get you out,’ he promised. ‘Don’t I always? The only things I’m good at, Charlie, are hurting people and keeping you safe.’

‘I should not find that reassuring,’ she muttered.

Monroe grinned and let her go, lifting his hand to her lips to kiss her knuckles. ‘If there’s monsters around, you want the biggest one on your side.’

 

It was false courage you found at the bottom of a bottle, but right now Charlie would have taken it. Except she wasn’t enough of a Matheson to drink that far down and keep walking. So she took a gulp of iced water to get rid of the cotton in her mouth, took a deep breath and walked over to Guzman. The plan suddenly seemed a lot less workable when you saw the beautiful women hovering around him. Charlie wished they’d had enough fabric to hem the dress for mom.

Still, all she had to do was talk him as far as the stairs. Maybe she could just ask him to show here to the jakes.

‘Hello,’ she said, thrusting out her hand. ‘Great party.’

He raised perfectly manicured eyebrows. ‘American?’ he said. Taking her hand he turned it knuckles down, baring the long, tanned line of her arm. Against the backdrop of cream silk and party glamour, the welted brand looked even rougher, more primitive, than usual. ‘Militia.’

Charlie wasn’t sure who she was more annoyed with. Her for spoiling their cover with three words or Monroe for being such a dick with sticking his brand on everything in the first place. She flexed her fingers against Guzman’s

‘Yes,’ she said and remembered Adam, the sweet bartender. ‘Well, deserter.’

‘And you admit it?’ he said, letting go of her hand. ‘I am a man who admires loyalty.’

Charlie reached for a glass of whisky and smiled. ‘I’m not looking for a job,’ she said. ‘And I’m a woman who admires winners, and the Militia clearly wasn’t that.’

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Monroe glare at her over a brunette’s shoulder when he caught that. She ignored him. It wasn’t as if it wasn’t true and insulting their competitors was the best way into a dictator’s good graces.

Guzman laughed, amusement crinkling the corner of his eyes, and glanced back at her from his lazy survey of the room. Relieved that the plan was still in play, she smiled at him. He stopped and stared at her, suddenly intent.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Nora,’ she said, habit grabbing that name from the raw place it lived. ‘Nora Porter.’

Guzman waved his other companions away and offered her his arm. ‘Do you dance, Nora?’

Her eyes flicked to Monroe, heat crawling up through her skin. ‘I do,’ she said, curling her fingers in the crook of his arm. ‘My partner’s toes might have their opinion on whether or not I can.’

‘My menagerie then?’ he suggested smoothly.

‘I love animals.’

 

The spear jabbed, piercing striped fur and making the cat squall. It huddled back against the far side of the cage, fur stretched over a rack of scarred flesh and bone. Guzman laughed and jabbed it again.

Charlie had only ever seen a tiger in pictures. They’d been beautiful. Aaron had told them that one good thing about the blackout was that animals like tigers could re-establish themselves in the wild. This was…

‘You evil son-of-bitch,’ she said, grabbing the spear. ‘It can’t even fight back-’

Guzman cracked his elbow into her face. She yelped and staggered back, blinking back the red wash of pain.

‘Animals I like in cages,’ Guzman said pleasantly. He tossed the spear aside, clattering on the stone, and stripped his long, studded belt off. He wrapped it around his fist and stalked forwards, boot heels scuffing on the floor. He smiled at her the same way he had at the tiger. ‘My women I let fight.’

Charlie sucked blood from the inside of her cheek and spat. ‘You’d have better odds with the cat.’

He laughed at her and swung the belt, welting a bloody line over her bare shoulder and upper arm. Pain flashed like numbness down to her fingers. She grabbed the belt, rough edges scraping her fingers, and yanked, punching him in that handsome lie of a face. His lips split under his knuckles, a satisfying smear of blood over his teeth.

He drove his knee into her stomach for that, driving the air out of her. The dress was worse than useless, twisting tight around her legs like hobbles. She kept forgetting, tripping herself up. Guzman got her down on the sour, stinking floor, groping her with bruising fingers. Charlie spat at him and stretched her arm, fingers scrabbling at the rough wood of the spear.

Guzman muttered indignities in her ear as he tore her top off. Charlie ignore the wet slobber of him. Just one more inch… The door kicked open and Monroe stalked it, just as Charlie laid open Guzman’s head with the butt of the spear.

Monroe grabbed Guzman by the collar and dragged him off Charlie. Blue eyes took in her bruising cheek and torn dress and just _went_. He killed like that, in emptiness.

‘Monroe. Bass,’ she said, scrambling to her feet. ‘We need him. Alive.’

Guzman laughed and bared bloody teeth. ‘Monroe. I should have known. Your miltia always were loyal bitches.’

Monroe mocked a smile and pulled the syringe from his pocket. ‘Alive, not happy,’ he said, flicking the cap off and punching it into the big, engorged vein of Guzman’s neck. It was one of mom’s concoctions - a ‘probably won’t kill him’ Mickey - and it dropped the Governor like a sack. Monroe didn’t even try to catch him, letting him hit the ground.

There was still something terrible and gone in Monroe’s face as he looked at Charlie. ‘Did he-’

‘No,’ she said quickly, hooking the bodice back up over her breasts. ‘Stupid skirt just slowed me down.’

Life soaked back in Monroe’s face as he relaxed. ‘I’ll kill him later, then,’ he said.

‘I don’t need a knight in shining armour,’ Charlie said.

‘I’m fairly tarnished,’ Monroe told her with rough gentleness. ‘Come on, lets get him up.’

Charlie ripped a strip from the torn hem of her dress, tying slantwise across her chest to hold the fabric in place. She helped Monroe haul Guzman over to a chair, tying his hands tight behind him. Just in case, although the man was flushed and slack-featured. Blood and spit drooled onto his shirt front.

Grabbing a handful of his hair Monroe yanked Guzman’s head back roughly. ‘Where’s Miles Matheson?’

A laugh bubbled out of Guzman. ‘Still sniffing that ass, Monroe?’

The backhand was almost casual, but Monroe had to hook a tooth of the Guzman’s mouth before the man choked on it. It took twenty minutes before Guzman, tenderised by pain and drugs, choked out the name of  mine.

‘I know I shouldn’t complain,’ Charlie said. ‘But if I was Miles’ enemy, I’d kill him the minute I had a chance. None of this ‘leaving him to suffer’ rubbish.’

Monroe snorted a laugh. ‘You’d be a worryingly practical despot, Charlie.’ He wiped his hands on Torres’ suit and gave her a sidelong look. ‘Go wait outside.’

It would be easy. Take the high ground, let Monroe be the monster he was happy to play.

‘No,’ Charlie said. ‘Don’t kill him.’

Monroe looked put upon. ‘We can’t leave him alive, Charlie. Dead he’ll cause enough trouble, alive he’ll have us buried by dawn.’

‘That won’t be a problem,’ she said, lifting a set of keys from the wall. ‘Look Monroe, you’re not my brother and you’re not my monster. I don’t need you to keep my hands clean.’

She shoved Guzman off the chair, closing her ears to his slabbered promises, and dragged him to the tiger’s cage. It was half blind and old, but it seemed to understand that without his stick, Guzman was nothing at all.

With luck, his men would think he just got careless with the cats. Why pick holes at a convenient power vacuum?

 

It wasn’t arranged. Back in camp Charlie pretended to be fine until her mother and Aaron believed her, recasting the evening as something clean and simple. Once they stopped watching her like she might just spontaneously break, she excused herself to get a wash.

She was sitting on a low rock in the shallows of the river, still in that stupid dress and watching fish chase moonlight under her toes, when Monroe found her. Charlie hadn’t expected him to follow her. Now that he had, she found she wasn’t surprised.

‘You did good today, but now you and Aaron need to leave,’ he said. ‘Rachel and me can get Miles.’

‘I don’t want to argue with you,’ Charlie said.

‘Good,’ he said, looking away from her. ‘I don’t want-’

‘I don’t want to talk to you either.’ Charlie grabbed his shirt and yanked, pulling him down on top of her. Caught by surprise, he sprawled out on top of her with a grunt. He was heavier than he looked. Charlie pulled his head back and bent down to slant her mouth over his in a rough, quick kiss. ‘I want to fuck you. Now.’

He choked on a laugh. ‘You’ve been spending too much time with me and Miles. You’re not like-’

Charlie snarled in frustration and shoved him off her, abruptly out of patience with him. ‘I’m not your virgin in a tower, Bass. I’m not a little girl and I’m not your little sister and-’

‘Shut up,’ he said, voice going flat and emotionless. Just for once, Charlie didn’t care that she’d hurt him.

‘Or what?’ she asked, licking her lower lip and widening her eyes. ‘You’re going to spank me, Sebastian? Is that it, can’t you get it up unless someone is crying? Or...can you just not get it up.’

His face went dark with temper and he grabbed at her, but Charlie scrambled out of the way. She scrambled to her feet and stepped back, breathing hard and smirking. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she sing-songed. ‘I mean, with your age and the amount you drink...’

Monroe shoved himself to his feet and grabbed her arm. She let him, leaning into his body. It didn’t matter whether they were going to fuck or fight. Either would get rid of the tension. Warm hands cupped her hips and tugged her close, his breath hot in her ear.

‘You need to cool down.’

‘Wha-’

He picked her up, ignoring her squawk of outrage, and carried her into the river. The water splashed around his boots and then up to his knees, the chill of it catching at Charlie’s toes. She cursed and squirmed, hating the heat clenching between her legs when he tightened his grip on her.

‘Put me down! You murdering son-of-bitch, you tin pot asshole,’ she muttered grimly. ‘Get off me.’

The water was splashing around his hips, soaking Charlie’s backside, when he stopped. She clung to him, arms wrapped tight around his neck. ‘Don’t you dare-ahhhh!’

He dropped her feet into the water, her body sliding down his. The water was shockingly cold when it hit her for the first time, the chill biting down to the bone. She gasped and clung to Monroe, pressing herself tight against his body.

‘You think I’m not hard?’ he rasped, hands gripping her backside and pulling so tight she could feel the evidence against her stomach. ‘You think that when you’re rubbing this sweet, round ass against me when we spar I don’t fucking ache? But I tried to do the right thing, I tried to be good.’

‘Scared what Miles would do to you if he found out?’ Charlie taunted him. ‘Or my mother?’

He kissed her hard, bending her neck back at a painful angle.

‘I was scared of what I’d do you,’ he said, lifting his head enough to let the words out. ‘I’m an old monster, Charlie. All I’ve got are regrets and Mathesons.’

‘But?’

‘Fuck it.’ he said, running his hands down her thighs and twisting the sodden fabric of her dress around them. ‘You’re mine.’

Charlie would have protested that, but he was kissing her again and wet silk was dragging against her legs. Even the water didn’t feel as cold. She could argue the ‘mine’ later. They stumbled back to the shallows, Charlie yanking his belt free and tossing swords and guns safely onto the rocks. Monroe kissed her shoulder, licking at the stinging welt from Guzman’s belt, and bunched her skirt up around her waist.

Maybe Charlie had fantasised about sex with Monroe a few times since she’d met him in the flesh. Some of them were wrong, all blood and death and sometimes it didn’t matter which of them it was, but most of them involved him begging her to let him go down on her, to touch her breasts or come inside her. She was in control.

This...she didn’t think either of them were in control.

Charlie kissed her way across Monroe’s chest, licking and biting at the tight, sweaty skin, and shoved his trousers down to his thighs. Her fingers trailed along the hard length of him, tracing the thick vein on the base of his cock with her nail. The quick caress made him flinch, muscles clenching, and grabbed her hands.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not yet.’

She pulled against his grip, twisting her wrists in his hands. ‘I want you.’

‘Do you trust me?’

‘No.’

He grinned at her, taking her breath away, and dragged her back in close for a kiss. The slope of the bank meant they were nearly the same height, so for once she didn’t have to crane her neck. His tongue chased the taste of her across her lips, the eager thrust of it dragging heat up from between her legs. She pressed against him, rubbing against the rigid muscles of his thigh and making low, throaty noises against his mouth.

‘Sometimes I think you’re still trying to kill me,’ he muttered, lips bumping hers as he spoke. Rough hands on her hips turned her around. Charlie gasped, a little disoriented, and then Monroe’s lips were on her throat and he was inside her. The ache of him stretching her out made her bite her lip, then bite it harder as a little pain mellowed into a lot of pleasure.

She leaned back against him, the muscles of her stomach clenching as Monroe hooked his arm over her hips. His chin tucked into her shoulder and he buried himself deeper inside her with slow, steady thrusts. Pleasure tightened and knotted in her stomach, pulling everything fluttering tight around Monroe’s cock.

‘Take it back,’ he murmured against her ear. A hand cupped her breast, scraping his thumb over her nipple until it tightened into a tight bud. ‘Say it.’

Charlie reached back over her shoulder, curling her fingers around his neck. ‘What.’

He turned his head, rubbing his cheek against the dead flesh of her brand. His teeth scraped the thick threads of scar tissue, sucking the skin under it into a bruise.

‘I’m not impotent. I’m not old.’

‘You’re not young,’ Charlie said, voice ragged.

Monroe bit her arm and let his hand slide down between her legs. His fingers spread the wet folds of her sex and circled the hard, little bundle of nerves, grazing it with a callused fingertip in time with each thrust. She gasped, twisting her lower lip between her teeth, and pushed back against him. It felt like the hot exhilaration before a fall, before a fight - her toes balanced on the edge of a sweet drop.

‘So full...’ she moaned sweetly, then dropped her head back on his shoulder. A smile quirked the corners of her mouth. ‘...of yourself.’

He covered her mouth with his, folding her lower lip between his teeth and pressing his palm flat against her sex. Charlie tipped over the edge she was teetering on, pleasure tearing her like a tide. It left her limp and shaking, Monroe the only thing keeping her on her feet. His breath was ragged against her throat, his body very still inside her as his fingers coaxed aftershocks through her.

She pulled away from him before he could do something stupid. Monroe wasn’t going to find his lost child inside her. Heavy, wet silk dropped over her legs, clinging to her ankles as she turned around. He’d dropped his hand to his cock, fingers wrapped around the shaft and his thumb stroking over the head. He was slick with her juices.

Watching him - the flex of muscle in his arms, across his chest - stirred the slow, lazy whorls of pleasure in her stomach and down her thighs. She never really watched anyone before. Except this was Monroe, the killer with the self-esteem of a junkyard dog. She’d hated him long enough to know him, and he was already finding reasons to make this go wrong.

‘I like watching you,’ she said. ‘You’re beautiful.’

She stopped, feeling heat hit her face the minute the words left her mouth. That sounded so stupid. Flowers were beautiful, baby ducks were beautiful. Men - hard, cold men with sword callused hands - weren’t beautiful.

‘I mean...I don’t,’ she stammered. He was grinning at her. She glared at him. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. I just-’

She’d never been good with words. In her head it was easy, but the minute she opened her mouth they went clumsy and simple.

_We’re family._

So she shut up and kissed him, putting her hand over his. ‘Show me what you like?’

‘Here?’

‘A crazy drug-lord that tortured cats nearly killed us today,’ she said. His hand dragged along his cock, her fingers moving with it. ‘Three months ago it was the patriots, six months ago it was drunk rednecks who thought I had no family. A year ago it was you. The odds are against us living out the week. So, yeah, here.’

He took her hand and showed her, his breath quick and ragged against her face as his hips rolled into her hand. When he came it was her name that dragged roughly between his lips. Charlotte, no one else ever called her that.

It wasn’t the sort of fuck that invited cuddling, but just walking away didn’t seem appropriate either. Even if they wanted to, they’d nowhere to go. They could hardly walk back into camp stinking of sex.

So they ended up sitting on the rock, leaning against each other. Monroe traced the welt on her shoulder with careful fingers. ‘I should have hurt him more.’

‘I’ve had worse,’ Charlie said.

His hand slid down, past her elbow to the rough welt on her forearm. Charlie braced herself for the apologies, her stomach going sour and uneasy.

‘I’m not sorry,’ he said casually.

It wasn’t what she’d expected to hear, it wasn’t the right thing to say. There was something comforting about the wrong thing though. It wasn’t as if either of them weren’t broken.

‘I’m not yours,’ she said.

‘Maybe I’m yours,’ he said, wrapping his hand over the brand. ‘Me and Mathesons, I can never let you go.’

If they lived out the year, maybe that would be a problem. Right now...everyone left her. She didn’t blame them, she understood why they did, but they still left. It probably wasn’t healthy to find it comforting that a sociopath had decided to love you, but maybe Charlie was maybe even more screwed up than him.

‘If we live through tomorrow...’

‘Then we live through tomorrow,’ Monroe shrugged. ‘Worry about it then.’

 


End file.
